MANILA, Philippines – Al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian ally is sharing bomb-making expertise with Muslim militants in the Philippines, according to government reports.

While U.S.-backed offensives have overrun established camps in the Mindanao region in the past couple of years, training by al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah's Indonesian operatives has continued on a limited basis, with militants setting up classes and plotting attacks, police and military intelligence officers said.

One Philippine security official said Mindanao, in the southern part of the country, "is like a terrorist academy," with trainees taught how to make bombs, plant them and set them off in test missions designed to help militants perfect their techniques to complete the course.

Investigators looking into Sunday's bombing of a passenger ferry while it was boarding on Basilan Island, injuring 30 people, said it appeared to be designed more to sow panic than kill, but that it was too early to speculate on the design.

A number of recent bombs – pieced together from fragments found at attack sites or recovered from Philippine rebel hide-outs – carry Jemaah Islamiyah's signature: the use of electronics, including Indonesian-designed integrated circuit boards, and cell phones that allow more efficiency and flexibility as triggers, according to several investigation reports seen by The Associated Press.

Many of the bombs used in attacks in the Philippines and Indonesia are believed to have been designed by Jemaah Islamiyah's top experts, including Pitono, a Bali bombing suspect and electronics expert also known as Dulmatin, the reports said.

The army has been hunting Dulmatin, along with at least nine other Indonesian militants, in the region of Mindanao, where he is thought to have joined the group of Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani, the military said.

An 11-pound TNT firebomb crammed into a TV set that went off on a passenger ferry in Manila Bay last year, killing 116 people in the Philippines' worst terror attack, used a Jemaah Islamiyah bomb design that could be set off by an alarm clock or a cell phone.

Philippine authorities arrested and charged the suspected attacker, Habil Dellosa, a Filipino Muslim convert who authorities say is an Abu Sayyaf member trained by Indonesian militants.

The Indonesians also have passed on the formulas of at least eight powerful explosive chemical mixtures, the reports said.

Authorities in both countries have found identical bombs rigged the same way in the metal frames of two strikingly similar bicycles.